4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Happy birthday, Lamberto Bava!
4 Shots From 4 Films
Macabre (1980, dir by Lamberto Bava)
Demons (1985, dir by Lamberto Bava)
Demons 2 (1986, dir by Lamberto Bava)
Dinner With A Vampire (1987, dir by Lamberto Bava)
(Because of the nature of the 1986 pseudo-slasher film, April Fool’s Day, it’s impossible to really talk about the film without talking about the film’s ending. As a result, this review will have spoilers. The ending will be revealed. The entire plot will be spoiled. Do not read on if that’s going to be an issue for you.)
(Did you read the warning above?)
If not for the way that the film ends, April Fool’s Day would probably be a forgotten film. It’s a slasher film that doesn’t feature much blood, sex, or any particularly flamboyant kills (though there’s a good reason for that). Compared to most low-budget slasher films from the mid-80s, April Fool’s Day does have a surprisingly charismatic and likable cast but it’s rare that anyone watches a holiday-themed slasher film for the acting. Up until the final ten minutes or so, April Fool’s Day is professionally done but somewhat generic…
But then you hit that ending and it totally changes the whole film. It’s not a perfect ending. In many ways, it’s probably one the most imperfect endings that I’ve ever seen. It requires a massive suspension of disbelief. It makes no logical sense. But dammit, I love it. Almost despite itself, it’s a great ending and it confirms that April Fool’s Day is meant to be a satire and not a straight horror film.
For the first 80 minutes or so, April Fool’s Day plays out like the 100th variation on And Then There Were None. Heiress Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman, giving a wonderfully odd performance) invites a group of college friends to her island mansion. They arrives on April Fool’s Day and they spend the first night dealing with Muffy’s strange sense of humor. (Actually, Muffy and I both find the same things funny but I’ve been told that I have a strange sense of humor so, therefore, I assume that Muffy must have one too.) Harvey, who prefers to be called Hal (Jay Baker), smokes an exploding cigar and discovers his bedroom has been decorated with newspaper articles about a car accident that he was involved in. Jock Arch Cummings (Thomas F. Wilson) finds steroids hidden away in a medicine cabinet. Nikki (Deborah Goodrich) comes across handcuffs in a dresser. Nan (Leah Pinset), a serious-minded drama student, hears a baby crying in the distance and is reminded of her abortion, something that she believes that only Muffy knows about.
The next day, Muffy is now wandering around in a daze and her brother, Skip (Griffin O’Neal), has vanished. Kit (Amy Steel, playing a similar role to her character in Friday the 13th Part Two) and Rob (Ken Olandt) think that they see Skip’s decaying body floating under the boathouse. As the day progresses, Arch and Nan vanish and later turn up at the bottom of a well. Harvey is found hanging from a rope. Chaz (Clayton Rohner) is castrated and, while we’re not quite sure what exactly happens to Nikki, we do see that it involves a large puddle of blood. Kit and Rob discover Muffy’s head in the basement and realize that they are being stalked by Muffy’s crazy twin, Buffy.
(Deborah Foreman is great in both of the roles. As Muffy, she delivers all of her lines with just a hint of sarcasm and constantly seems to be silently laughing at a private joke that only she understands. And when she’s Buffy — well, she’s totally batshit crazy.)
Being pursued by a knife-wielding Buffy, Kit runs through the mansion and finds herself in the drawing room. And who is waiting for her but all of Buffy’s victims? No, they’re not dead! Instead, they’re alive and they’re all in a very good mood. And Buffy is not Buffy. She’s Muffy and she’s been Muffy all along.
That’s right, it’s all a huge elaborate joke! Muffy does spend a few minutes explaining how the whole weekend was a dry run for her plan to turn her estate into a resort, one that will offer a weekend of fake horror. But, ultimately, it all comes down to the entire movie being an elaborate joke. I know, just from perusing some of the comments at the imdb, that there are some horror fans who hate the ending of April’s Fool’s Day. But, really, that’s the only “honest” way that a film like April Fool’s Day could end. If the movie was called Thanksgiving, I could understand being upset. But this is an April Fool’s Day movie! It has to be a joke.
Of course, if you think about it too much, the ending makes no sense. Muffy specifically states the no one was in on the joke until the last minute. Whenever one of her friends would wander off on their own, Muffy would grab them, explain the joke, and get them to play along. When you consider the size of the island and where, at various points, the victims are in relation to the other characters, Muffy must be a very fast explainer, as well as being very persuasive. (As well, Harvey brings a gun with him to island. Muffy jokes about nearly getting shot by him but imagine if he had been successful?) Even if you accept that all of the friends — even Arch and Harvey, who are both kinda dumbasses — would be able to play along without screwing things up, you have to wonder why Muffy thought it would be a good idea to use dark secrets from everyone’s past.
If you search far enough online, you can find all sorts of rumors about the film that April Fool’s Day was originally meant to be. In the finished film, Skip is a bit of a cipher but, in the original script, he was a much more complex character. While Muffy was busy playing her elaborate prank, Skip was planning on killing Muffy and claiming their parent’s inheritance for himself. The crying baby, the drugs, the incriminating newspaper articles; all of them were originally meant to be the work of Skip. While Skip’s subplot was dropped, the dark secrets of the past were not. As a result, Muffy comes across as being a lot more cruel than was originally intended.
Originally, the film was also meant to end with Skip killing Muffy but the ending was apparently changed at the last-minute. (Reports differ on whether or not the original ending was ever filmed.) Instead, the film now ends with Muffy stumbling into her bedroom, playing with a jack-in-the-box, and then getting a knife drawn across her throat by Nan. It’s just another elaborate practical joke and, once Muffy realizes that she’s not dying, Nan gives her a quick kiss and smiles enigmatically.
(A lot of imdb commenters — mostly males — have read a lot into that kiss, obsessing on a subtext that really isn’t there. As opposed to being the homage to Blue Is The Warmest Colour that many commenters appear to believe it to be, it’s really just a friendly kiss, a way of saying, “I got you.” Sorry, guys, that’s all there is to it.)
It’s an ending that would never be done today. Today, all horror films have to end with the promise of a sequel. Muffy might still get away with pulling an elaborate prank but Nan would definitely have killed her at the end of the film. Her little smile would have said, “Wait for the sequel.” And the modern version of that ending definitely would not be as effective. In fact, it would be so expected that it would be damn near infuriating. Instead, the ending of April Fool’s Day is good-natured and likable, which is appropriate because April Fool’s Day is a surprisingly good-natured and likable film.
After Nan’s final joke, April Fool’s Day ends with a song. And here it is! Enjoy and I hope everyone had a great April Fool’s Day!
I don’t wear hats but if I did, I would give a tip of the hat to my friends over at Horrorpedia for the news that apparently, a pilot has been put into production for an Exorcist TV show.
And then I would sigh. Actually, that’s what I’m doing right now.
Seriously, an Exorcist TV show? Which dumbfug toadsucker thought this was a good idea? What damnable dumbfuckery is this?
Oh! And hey, the pilot is being written by the same guy who wrote the Fantastic Four movie! It gets even better!
For what it’s worth, here’s the plot description:
Two very different men — Father Tomas Ortega (Alfonso Herrera) and Father Marcus Lang (Ben Daniels) — tackle one family’s case of horrifying demonic possession and confronting the face of true evil…
To be honest, I could probably get enthusiastic if the show was a prequel about the early life of Father Merrin. But this sounds more like a remake of Deliver Us From Evil and that movie was pretty bad! I mean, not even Joel McHale could save that movie…
And seriously — what type of priest is named Marcus Lang?
Here’s hoping that Pazuzu puts a stop to this before the legacy of a true horror classic is tarnished any further.
“Rooted in medieval fears of Genghis Khan and the Mongolian invasions of Europe, the Yellow Peril combines racist terror of alien cultures, sexual anxieties, and the belief that the West will be overpowered and enveloped by the irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East”- Gina Marchetti, Romance and the Yellow Peril: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (University of California Press, 1994)
First, a brief history lesson: The Yellow Peril was a particular brand of xenophobia that spread in the late 19th/early 20th century. Named by (of all people) Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and given credibility during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, this “fear of the unknown” basically said those “inscrutable” Chinese were going to come over and slaughter all the good white Christians and rape their women. Popular culture of the times played on these fears by depicting villainous Oriental characters as barbaric, opium-smoking deviants who…
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I had high hopes for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the just-released film which, like the novel upon which it is based, attempts to combine Jane Austen and The Walking Dead. The source material was good. The cast — with Lilly James as Elizabeth Bennet, Jack Huston as Wickham, and Matt Smith as Parson Collins — was impressive. The trailers looked great, promising a combination of zombies, ornate costumes, and a very British sense of humor. Sadly, however, the ultimate film is a bit of disappointment.
Actually, it’s more than just a bit of a disappointment. It is a HUGE disappointment. To have so much promise and then to turn out so bland — well, it’s enough to make you wonder if maybe zombies have become so common place in popular culture that they’re no longer as interesting as they once were. Don’t get me wrong, as a symbol of the impossibility of escaping death, zombies are great nightmare fuel. But, when you see them in a relatively bloodless PG-13 film like this, you realize that it takes more than just a few random zombies to make an effective horror film.
Plotwise, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is exactly what it says it is. It tells the same basic story as Pride and Prejudice, with the exception being that England is now under siege from zombies, the Bennet sisters have now been trained in how to kill zombies, Mr. Darcy (played by Sam Riley) is now Col. Darcy and he’s an expert at tracking down zombies and killing them, and Wickham is now more than just a cad, he’s a cad who wants to help the undead overthrow the living. As I typed all that out, I realized I was probably making the film sound a lot more fun than it actually is. And really, the movie should be fun but it’s not.
Director Burr Steers never manages to capture the proper tone for telling this story. The satire is never as sharp as it needs to be. The scenes that are meant to pay homage to Austen try a bit too hard to capture Austen’s style without contributing any of her insight and the romance between Elizabeth and Darcy is sabotaged by the fact that Sam Riley and Lilly James had absolutely no chemistry together. The scenes with the zombies are bland, largely because this is a PG-13 rated film and bloodless zombies aren’t particularly scary. A typical episode of The Walking Dead is more graphic than anything you’ll see in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Which is not to say that there aren’t a few moments when Pride and Prejudice and Zombies kind of works. It has moments but they’re isolated and they never really come together to build any sort of narrative momentum for the film as a whole. Sam Riley is a bit of a dud as Darcy but Lilly James, Jack Huston, and especially Matt Smith all give good performance. (Smith, in particular, is so good as Collins that I would like to see him play the role in an actual adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.) Early on in the film, there’s a fun scene where the Bennet sisters destroy a horde of zombies and it actually strikes the right balance between comedy and horror. Before that, we get the traditional scene that we get in all Austen adaptations, of the Bennet sisters preparing for a ball and, in between lacing up corsets and discussing whether they will all be able find husbands, they also carefully conceal the daggers and knives that they will be carrying just in case they happen to run into any of the undead. It’s one of the few scenes that suggests what Pride and Prejudice and Zombies could have been if it had only found a consistent tone.
For that matter, I also liked the animated opening credits, which wittily explained how the zombies first appeared in England and, not surprisingly, suggested that it was all the fault of the French. And the film also had a fairly effective scene that shows up in the middle of the end credits and suggested what would might happen if Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 2 is ever put into production.
But ultimately, even those moments that worked only left me frustrated that the rest of the film did not. For all of its potential, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies disappoints.
Apparently, Ulli Lommel is taking a break from making low-budget serial killer biopics to make another sequel to his 1980 film, The Boogeyman! This sequel will be titled Boogeyman: Reincarnation, which is an improvement over the previous Boogeyman sequel, Revenge of the Boogeyman.
(As a film blogger writing about Ulli Lommel, I am now contractually obligated to point out that Revenge of the Boogeyman was largely made up of flashbacks to the first Boogeyman film.)
Now, here at the Shattered Lens offices, we have a long-running debate going over whether Ulli Lommel or Uwe Boll is the worst director of all time. Usually, I pick Lommel but let’s give credit where credit is due. Both The Boogeyman and The Devonsville Terror had plenty of spooky atmosphere. They certainly were far better than Curse of the Zodiac or any of Lommel’s more recent films.
(As a film blogger writing about Ulli Lommel, I am now contractually obligated to point out that Curse of the Zodiac is the worst film ever made.)
And the trailer for Boogeyman: Reincarnation may not look great but it doesn’t look as bad as most of Lommel’s films. In fact, I would even say that Boogeyman: Reincarnation looks almost good enough to be mistaken for a Bill Rebane film!
Anyway, here’s the trailer for Boogeyman: Reincarnation, which has no release date but which will probably end up on Netflix at some point in the future.
We celebrate the 6th year anniversary of the site and we continue a yearly holiday ritual over here at Through the Shattered Lens. I present to all of you readers, visitors and passer-byes the greatest holiday film ever created since forever, ever.
It is a film full of joy and happiness. Of giving and sharing with loved ones that which matters most. This is a film that best describes what Through the Shattered Lens stands for and works towards.
It even has a scene straight out of a Disney classic.
So, from all of us at Through the Shattered Lens….
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!
So, I finally got a chance to watch Bait, the second episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead, and you know what? It will probably never happen because this isn’t exactly a traditional awards-bait show and, if the somber and ultraserious Walking Dead can’t get any Emmy love, I doubt that Ash vs. Evil Dead will ever do any better. But, seriously, Mimi Rogers totally deserves an Emmy for her performance in Bait.
I’m not sure which category she would win for. I guess Best Actress in a Comedy Series, though I think it’s a bit too simplistic to say that Ash vs. Evil Dead is just a comedy. It’s true that Ash vs. Evil Dead is full of funny moments and Bruce Campbell can make me laugh just by narrowing his eyes but, at the same time, there’s some pretty dark stuff going on in this “comedy.” And the Deadites are genuinely scary! It’s not just the makeup and the voices. There’s also the fact that they come to us in the form of the people that we love and, more often than not, they reveal the inner demons of our loved ones.
I mean, think about it. What if you had to choose between becoming a zombie or becoming a Deadite? I think I’d rather be a zombie. After all, a zombie is just a walking body. You may recognize the body but you know that the soul and the mind are no longer there. If I became a zombie, you could shoot me in the head without worrying about hurting my feelings. In fact, I wouldn’t even know that I was a zombie. And, if someone I loved became a zombie, I’m pretty sure that I could put them down if I had to. Because, again, a zombie is just a body without a personality. I mean, zombies can’t even talk!
But Deadites — oh my God! No way would I want to become one of those. Deadites still have a personality. You can’t shut them up. Up until they start drooling and talking in that evil voice, Deadites can still act like human beings. That false hint of lingering humanity would make it impossible for me to kill a Deadite.
I guess that’s why we’re lucky to have Ash Williams around. Ash is infamous for not being particularly smart but, as the Evil Dead franchise continually reminds us, his stupidity is his greatest strength. Ash doesn’t get caught up in the specifics. He doesn’t worry about the why. Instead, he just does what he has to do. He’s a blue-collar hero, in his way.
As for the 2nd episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead, it featured Ash and Pablo saving Kelly from her Deadite mom, played by Mimi Rogers. It took Ash a while to convince Kelly that her mom was actually a Deadite. In fact, Kelly didn’t really believe it until her mom stabbed her father in the eye with a fork.
What made this episode especially memorable was that Kelly’s mom was almost as scary when she was normal as when she was a Deadite. The scene where Ash, Pablo, Kelly, and the parents had an awkward dinner together was full of cringe-worthy moments. It was obvious that there were problems in the family even before mom killed dad. Becoming a Deadite allowed Kelly’s mom the chance to express her true feelings towards everyone.
Fortunately, Ash was there with his trusty chainsaw.
And, happily, he’ll be back on Saturday as well!
Which is good because Ash Williams may be our only hope…
Preacher the comic book that came out in 1995 and became the title that everyone gravitated to to balance out all the superhero titles that were coming out from Marvel, DC, Image and every small publisher in-between. The book was written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Steve Dillon. It was the book that took on the institutions of the Church, government and family in the most irreverent and blasphemous way one could think of at the time.
The book had been talked of within Hollywood since it’s release as one title that producers (seems all of them at one time or another) wanted to adapt for the big-screen. It wasn’t a superhero title so there was no need to worry about trying to adapt tights-wearing heroes and villains. Yet, the book’s subject matter which tended to go into the extreme at times became something that kept the title from being adapted.
After almost two decades of futile attempts to get Preacher up onto the big-screen it took the star-power of one big-screen star (Seth Rogen) to finally get the book adapted, but not on the big-screen, but on the small-screen to become part of AMC’s stable of unique series titles (The Walking Dead, Better Call Saul, Into the Badlands).
So, fans of the books only have until 2016 to wait for their dreams of Preacher finally coming to live-action life and non-readers will finally see what all the hype has been all about.
Last night, like all good horror fans, I sat down and I watched the premiere of the new Starz show, Ash vs. Evil Dead!
And it was groovy!
Okay, I’m sorry. I imagine that I am one of about 100,000 reviewers who started a review of Ash vs. Evil Dead by saying that it was groovy. That is probably the most obvious thing that I could have possibly said and, as someone who prides herself on being both an original and a contrarian, I should be deeply ashamed.
But I’m not. Because, seriously — groovy was the perfect description for this show. Even if it wasn’t the catch phrase of both Ash Williams and Bruce Campbell, it would still be just the right word to use. After all, when Ash vs. Evil Dead was first announced, I know that a lot of people were worried that the show would somehow fail to live up to the legacy of the Evil Dead. They were worried that Starz would attempt to unnecessarily update the concept or that they would go The Walking Dead route and come up with a dark drama about a grim-faced Ash Williams trying to survive in a world that has been overrun by Deadites.
Well, after seeing the premiere episode, the world does seem to be in danger of being overrun by Deadites but Ash Williams is anything but grim-faced. Perhaps he should be, since it’s all kind of his fault.
When the first episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead opened, we discovered that Ash was living in a trailer park and that actually seemed rather appropriate. We also discovered that Ash is no longer encouraging people to “Shop smart. Shop S-mart.” No, instead he’s working at Value Mart. His co-worker, Pablo (Ray Santiago) looks up to Ash even before Ash tells him about what happened during the first two Evil Dead films. His other co-worker, Kelly (Donna Delorenzo), is a lot less impressed by Ash but he certainly likes her.
What does Ash spend his time doing? Well, he likes to go down to the local bar and make up stories about why he has a “rosewood” hand. And, during the first few minutes of the episode, he keeps seeing people suddenly transformed into Deadites. Even when he’s at work, he ends up getting attacked by an apparently possessed doll, a scene that allows Bruce Campbell to show off his flair for physical comedy.
Why are the Deadites back? Simply put, they’re back because Ash fucked up. That shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone because that’s kind of what Ash does. (Fortunately, he’s played by Bruce Campbell so we love him anyway.) In this case, Ash was stoned and he decided to impress a one night stand by reading the Necronomicon Ex Mortis.
(If Ash actually learned from his mistakes, he just wouldn’t be Ash.)
One thing I liked about the first episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead is that it didn’t waste any time getting right to what everyone wanted to see. It opened with the assumption that, if you were watching, you already knew about the twisted history of Ash and the Deadites. This episode was directed by Sam Raimi and it was full of everything that you could possibly want — cray camera angles, insane tracking shots, slapstick comedy, and blood. And I do mean a lot of blood. Whenever the episode threatened to get too serious, Bruce Campbell popped up with another bit of physical comedy or a strangely inspired line reading. Whenever things threatened to get too silly, a Deadite would suddenly show up and start screaming. (The Deadites are always scary, regardless of how much comedy may be going on around them.) Raimi and Campbell struck a perfect balance between comedy and horror.
I imagine that, for many, the premiere’s big applause scene came when Ash and his chainsaw met in mid-air. It was a perfect moment and hopefully, the rest of the series will follow the premiere’s lead.
Because if it does, this show is going to be really …. groovy.
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